13-year-old pulled alive from rubble

Friday

Oct 28, 2011 at 12:01 AMOct 28, 2011 at 12:20 PM

ERCIS, Turkey (AP) — A 13-year-old boy was pulled from a collapsed building without injury today, five days after Turkey’s powerful earthquake struck, and state-run TV said he survived by drinking rainwater that seeped through cracks in the wreckage around him.

The boy, Ferhat Tokay, also used shoes under his head as a pillow and peered through a tiny gap in the wreckage to see when it was day or night outside, his uncle said.

Tokay was discovered early this morning, soon after rescue workers from Azerbaijan had sent the uncle and other relatives away from the site to get some rest, saying there was no chance of finding the missing boy alive.

“He didn’t even have a scratch on him!” the uncle, Sahin Tokay, told NTV television. “He was hungry on the first day, but the hunger pangs later disappeared.”

The 7.2-magnitude quake leveled about 2,000 buildings in eastern Turkey on Sunday, killing at least 573 people and leaving about 2,500 injured and thousands homeless. Authorities say another 5,700 buildings are now unfit for habitation.

The government’s crisis management center said 187 people have been freed from the rubble alive. Search-and-rescue operations have ended in the provincial capital of Van, but they are continuing in Ercis.

Ferhat was working in a shoe shop on the ground floor of a multistory building in the town when the quake hit.

Turkey is mostly Muslim, and in Ercis today, many people held traditional Muslim prayers outdoors, in parks or in streets strewn with rubble from the earthquake.

Others prayed in tents or in the few mosques still standing, the state-run Anatolia news agency said. One of them was the Seyid Muhammed mosque, which Tokay and his family use. Its only damage is a gaping crack at the foot of its minaret.

As men entered it to pray today, its imam, Selahattin Tasdemir, said: “It wouldn’t have been considered a sin to not pray today because these people are victims and in a difficult situation.

“But their conscience wouldn’t allow it. They’re used to praying, so we prayed,” he said in an interview with Associated Press Television News.

The 213-person Azerbaijani rescue team that saved Tokay is equipped with sniffer dogs, and it has saved nine other people from the wreckage since Sunday night.

Yesterday, the team pulled 18-year-old Imdat Padak from another destroyed building in Ercis.

Meanwhile, rescue workers from dozens of countries continue to deliver tents, prefabricated homes, blankets and heaters to the desolate and cold areas hit by the quake.

Officials said today some aid trucks have been looted before reaching Ercis.